‘I sing of arms and of the man’

After a century of civil strife in Rome and Italy, Virgil wrote The Aeneid to honour the emperor Augustus by praising Aeneas – Augustus’ legendary ancestor. As a patriotic epic imitating Homer, The Aeneid also provided Rome with a literature equal to the Greek. It tells of Aeneas, survivor of the sack of Troy, and of his seven year journey – to Carthage, falling tragically in love with Queen Dido; then to the underworld, in the company of the Sibyl of Cumae; and finally to Italy, where he founded Rome. It is a story of defeat and exile, of love and war, hailed by Tennyson as ‘the stateliest measure ever moulded by the lips of man’.

David West’s acclaimed prose translation is accompanied by his revised introduction and individual prefaces to the twelve books of The Aeneid.

Translated by George Chapman, with Introductions by Jan Parker. Hector bidding farewell to his wife and baby son, Odysseus bound to the mast listening to the Sirens, Penelope at the loom, Achilles dragging Hector's body round the walls of Troy - scenes from Homer have been reportrayed in every generation. The questions about mortality and identity that Homer's heroes ask, the bonds of love, respect and fellowship that motivate them, have gripped audiences for three millennia. Chapman's Iliad and Odyssey are great English epic poems, but they are also two of the liveliest and readable translations of Homer. Chapman's freshness makes the everyday world of nature and the craftsman as vivid as the battlefield and Mount Olympus. His poetry is driven by the excitement of the Renaissance discovery of classical civilisation as at once vital and distant, and is enriched by the perspectives of humanist thought.

In this volume, Lightfoot offers a detailed study of an ancient Greek geographical poem by Dionysius, a scholar-poet who flourished in Alexandria during the reign of Hadrian, which describes the world as it was then known. In antiquity, it was widely read and extremely influential, both in the schoolroom and among later poets. Translated into Latin, the subject of commentaries, and popular in Byzantium, it offers insights into multiple traditions of ancient geography, both literary and more scientific, and displays interesting affiliations to the earlier school of Alexandrian poets. The introductory essays discuss the poem's place in the literary context of ancient geography, focusing on its language, style, and metre, whereby Dionysius shows himself a particularly painstaking heir of the Hellenistic poets, and illustrates how intricately he interlaces sources and models to produce a mosaic of geographical learning. Particular emphasis is given to Dionysius' place in the ancient tradition of didactic poetry, and to his artful manipulations of ancient ethnographical convention to produce a vision of a bounteous, ordered, and harmonious world in the high days of the Roman Empire. The commentary, supported by a fresh edition and English translation, discusses Dionysius as a geographer but, above all, as a literary artist. This volume contributes to the revival of interest in, and appreciation of, imperial hexameter poetry, and brings to the fore a poem that deserves to be every bit as well-known as its Hellenistic counterpart, the Phaenomena of Aratus.

No modern, well-versed literature lover can call their education complete without having read Augustine's Confessions. One of the most original works of world literature, it is the first autobiography ever written, influencing writers from Montaigne to Rousseau, Virginia Woolf to Stephen Greenblatt. It is here that we learn how one of the greatest saints in Christendom overcame a wild and reckless past. Yet English translators have emphasised the ecclesiastical virtues of this masterpiece, at the expense of its passion and literary vigour. Restoring the lyricism of Augustine's original language, Peter Constantine offers a masterful and elegant translation of Confessions.

POETAE COMICI GRAECIis now the standard and indispensable reference work for the whole of Greek Comedy, a genre which flourished in Antiquity for over a millenium, from the VI century B.C. to the V century A.D.: More than 250 poets are conveniently arranged in alphabetical sequence and all the surviving texts have been carefully edited with full testimonia, detailed critical apparatus, and brief but illuminating subsidia interpretationis. The commentaries are in Latin. This great enterprise has won universal acclaim, Vol. VI 2 Menander being singled out by the Times Literary Supplement as one of the "International Books of the Year 1998".

Im Zentrum der Arbeit steht die fur die Stoa grundlegende Oikeiosis-Lehre. Eine der wichtigsten Quellen fur diese Theorie ist das dritte Buch von Ciceros Dialog de finibus, das bisher als zuverlassige Darstellung der stoischen Ethik galt. Demgegenuber zeigt der Autor, dass an zentralen Stellen, namlich bei der Darstellung der Oikeiosis, nicht stoisches, sondern peripatetisches Material verarbeitet wurde. Diese nicht-stoischen Elemente werden dann mit einer sehr ahnlichen Darstellung der Oikeiosis-Lehre von sicher peripatetischer Provenienz verglichen, die sich bei Johannes Stobaios erhalten hat: Fur sie und den bei Stobaios tradierten Text kann eine gemeinsame Vorlage erschlossen werden. Als moeglicher Urheber dieser Lehre kann durch die Interpretation weiterer Quellen ein Zeitgenosse Ciceros, der Peripatetiker Xenarchos von Seleukeia, ausgemacht werden, dessen Ethik hier zum ersten Mal ausfuhrlich rekonstruiert wird. Die Ergebnisse haben Auswirkungen auf das Verstandnis von Stoa und Peripatos, besonders auf die Interpretation der Oikeiosis-Lehre, und geben neue Einblicke in Ciceros Arbeitsweise und die philosophischen Diskussionen des 1. Jh. v. Chr.

Plutarch's Lives have been popular reading from antiquity to the present day, combining engaging biographical detail with a strong underlying moral purpose. The Lives of Demosthenes and Cicero are an unusual pair in that they are about unmilitary men who, while superb technically as orators, were both in the end political failures, crushed by the military power which dominated their world. In these two Lives, Plutarch is not so much interested in Demosthenes' and Cicero's rhetorical technique as in their ability to persuade an audience to vote for the right course of action, even if that action was prima facie unpopular. In Plutarch's own time, when the empire of the Caesars had been established for over a century, liberty was of necessity limited, but still an issue, for both Greeks and Romans. His home, Chaeroneia, was a provincial town in Greece, but he travelled regularly to Italy where he met Romans from the elite that ruled the empire. He wrote both for his fellow imperial subjects who still sought to enjoy what freedom they could obtain from the ruling power, and for the Romans who exercised that power but were always subject to the ultimate authority of the emperor. Along with the translations and commentaries, Lintott provides a detailed introduction which discusses the background and context of these two Lives, essential information about the author and the periods in which these two orators lived, and the philosophy which underlies Plutarch's presentation of the two personalities.

Sixty years ago, the University of Chicago Press undertook a momentous project: a new translation of the Greek tragedies that would be the ultimate resource for teachers, students, and readers. They succeeded. Under the expert management of eminent classicists David Grene and Richmond Lattimore, those translations combined accuracy, poetic immediacy, and clarity of presentation to render the surviving masterpieces of Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides in an English so lively and compelling that they remain the standard translations. Today, Chicago is taking pains to ensure that our Greek tragedies remain the leading English-language versions throughout the twenty-first century. In this highly anticipated third edition, Mark Griffith and Glenn W. Most have carefully updated the translations to bring them even closer to the ancient Greek while retaining the vibrancy for which our English versions are famous. This edition also includes brand-new translations of Euripides' "Medea", "The Children of Heracles", "Andromache", and "Iphigenia among the Taurians", fragments of lost plays by Aeschylus, and the surviving portion of Sophocles' satyr-drama "The Trackers". New introductions for each play offer essential information about its first production, plot, and reception in antiquity and beyond. In addition, each volume includes an introduction to the life and work of its tragedian, as well as notes addressing textual uncertainties and a glossary of names and places mentioned in the plays. In addition to the new content, the volumes have been reorganized both within and between volumes to reflect the most up-to-date scholarship on the order in which the plays were originally written. The result is a set of handsome paperbacks destined to introduce new generations of readers to these foundational works of Western drama, art, and life.

The Funeral Orations of Michael Psellos were scatteredthroughout old editions or inaccessible periodicals. Moreover, most of the editions were inadequate, full of misreadings and other mistakes, which rendered some passages of the texts almost unintelligible. This new edition brings together half of these funeral orations. It is based on all the manuscripts preserving these texts andincludes an apparatus fontium and a critical apparatus.

An authoritative new translation of Plato's The Republic by Christopher Rowe, with notes and an introduction. 'We set about founding the best city we could, because we could be confident that if it was good we would find justice in it' The Republic, Plato's masterwork, was first enjoyed 2,400 years ago and remains one of the most widely-read books in the world: as a foundational work of Western philosophy, and for the richness of its ideas and virtuosity of its writing. Presented as a dialogue between Plato's teacher Socrates and various interlocutors, it is an exhortation to philosophy, inviting its readers to reflect on the choices to be made if we are to live the best life available to us. This complex, dynamic work creates a picture of an ideal society governed not by the desire for money, power or fame, but by philosophy, wisdom and justice. Christopher Rowe's accurate and enjoyable new translation remains faithful to the many variations of the Republic's tone, style and pace. This edition also contains a chronology, further reading, an outline of the work's main arguments and an introduction discussing Plato's relationship with Socrates, and the Republic's style, ideas and historical context.

Die TragAdie handelt vom Leid der kriegsgefangenen Trojanerinnen und ihrer frA1/4heren KAnigin Hekabe. Es geht um ein Menschenopfer, den Mord an einem wehrlosen Kind und eine grausame Blutrache. Die DA1/4sterkeit der hier dargestellten Welt, aus der sich die GAtter anscheinend zurA1/4ckgezogen haben, mag den moderen Zuschauer und Leser befremden. Man kann aber zu einem historisch angemesseneren VerstAndnis dieses a žschwArzesten StA1/4ckes des Euripidesa oe gelangen, wenn man versucht, es mit den Augen der Zeitgenossen zu sehen.

This Middle High German text tells the story of positive and negative knightly deeds from the Trojan Wars to the 'present' (around 1200). In the story the exemplary character of the Christian code of chivalry is challenged by a knightly ideology making chivalrous 'performance' dependent on amorous favours. The unrightful matrimonial compact between the Countess of Beamunt and Sir Mauritius von CraAn culminates in a 'fulfillment' that creates an irreconcilable rift between the parties to the agreement. The amusing text, handed down to us solely in the early 16th century AAmbraser HeldenbuchA, is given here in a reconstructed Middle High German form corresponding to the language of 1200 but adhering as closely as possible to the manuscript. Metric considerations were left out of account in the text production. The edition also contains the text of an Old French fable on a comparable subject, complete with a translation into New High German.